


Recluse

by Sadbhyl



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-29
Updated: 2010-09-29
Packaged: 2017-10-15 14:52:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/161918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sadbhyl/pseuds/Sadbhyl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Little did Mike realize when he first met him that eventually he would find Sherlock Holmes a flatmate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recluse

**Author's Note:**

> Pre-series. I make no apologies for the rubbish science. If you can’t make it, fake it.

  
“Dr. Stamford!”

Mike flinched, spilling pepper pot soup on his tie. With a frustrated grunt, he put down his spoon and pulled a napkin from the dispenser on the table in front of him. “What is it, Stacy?” He never looked up, focused on blotting at the new stain instead.

“There’s a strange…man in your lab.”  The way she said it seemed as though she didn’t think the word “man” was the right choice.

It also sounded as though she’d been crying.

He snapped his head up to see her eyes rimmed red and uneven streaks through her foundation. “Are you all right? What on earth happened?”

She didn’t sit, standing rigid and anxious, her hands clenching in distress. “He…he was just helping himself to the solvents cabinet, and I knew he wasn’t a student, he wasn’t even wearing a lab coat, so I went in and asked him who he was. He told me…things.”

“Things? What kind of things?” If some pervert had been assaulting one of his students, Mike would have his balls in a sack.

Stacy’s eyes were still wide. “Things. About myself, about my family, my boyfriend, things we do. Things he shouldn’t know.” Now when she looked at him, she seemed to actually see him. “Who is he, Dr. Stamford?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll bloody well find out.” He dropped the napkin and stood up, forcing Stacy into his seat. “Drink that coffee. I haven’t touched it yet. It’ll do you good until I get back.”

“Be careful, Dr. Stamford.” Stacy lowered her voice, still anxious. “I think he might be crazy or something.”

Mike wasn’t a hero. He never had been. There were plenty of other people in the world to do that. And he wasn’t stupid. Stacy might be overreacting, although he doubted it. She was a pretty level headed girl. So he split the difference, stopping at the security desk on his way to the lab to put the guard there on notice.

The lab door was shut as always, but through the window Mike could see the man inside neatly and precisely adding drops of prepared sample to a straight line of chromatography strips. He wasn’t much younger than Mike, definitely not young enough to be a student, his tall, slender build clothed in a dark suit even Mike couldn’t afford, black dress shirt underneath open at the neck. As Stacy said, he hadn’t bothered with a lab coat, putting that expensive suit at risk considering the chemicals he was using.

Mike pushed open the door. Unable to come up with the right words in this situation, he started with, “Afternoon.”

The man glanced up, pale, serpentine eyes raking over him quickly. “Ah, Dr. Stamford, good afternoon. Sorry to take you away from your lunch. I do hope your intern is all right. Although, frankly, if she can’t hold up better under stress, medicine might not be the best career for her. Could I trouble you for a professional opinion?”

The words had been rattled off so fast, Mike was still processing the first. “How’d you know I was at lunch?”

The man’s eyes twitched as though he were fighting not to roll them. “The stain on your tie, of course. New one, tomato judging by the discoloration, something spicy, probably a calalloo based on the vasodilation in your cheeks.” He gestured with the pipette in his hand. “There, between the pasta stain from Tuesday and the fish pie from a week ago Thursday. You might want to expand your tie collection.”

His accuracy made Mike realize that maybe Stacy was right to be upset. “Who are you? What are you doing here? Why don’t you have a badge?”

“Badges are a waste of time,” he said disdainfully. “The guards keep the back door propped open for their smoke breaks. It’s easier just to duck in that way.”

“You sneak in here often?”

He shrugged. “Sometimes. Usually I’m headed to the morgue.”

“The… Who are you?”

“You’re repeating yourself, Doctor. Sherlock Holmes. I’m here because the director owes me a favor. Well, I say favor…” He wrinkled his nose, a trace of wickedness narrowing his eyes.

“So you just helped yourself to my lab?”

“I needed the gas chromatographer. Or I thought I might.” He gestured towards the compound microscope near him. “Take a look.”

“What is it?”

“You tell me.”

Curiosity won out. This man was definitely curious, but he didn’t seem dangerous, and Mike suspected the only way he was going to get an answer was to play this Sherlock Holmes’ game.

Pushing his glasses up onto his forehead, he leaned in to rest his eyes on the optics. A familiar meshwork of cell walls and infrastructure leapt into focus. “Renal cells, from the looks of it.”

“Yes, but what about them?”

He studied the specimen more closely. “There’s red blood cells in the renal corpuscles, maybe from the collapsed glomeruli, and interstitial edema.”

“Yes, and on the electron microscope, I found epithelial cell cytotoxicity and deposits of amorphous material in the tubules.”

Mike pulled back to look at him. “Are you a doctor, then?”

“No, just a scientist of sorts. But put it all together. What does it mean?”

Readjusting his glasses, Mike though about it. “The tissue damage is too extensive to be from conventional renal failure. On the face of it, I’d say some kind of organic toxicity.”

“Yes, exactly what I thought. But there were no signs of injury on the victim’s body, or at least nothing obvious.” Sherlock’s eyes grew bright at the though. “But her daughter had been to Louisiana recently, volunteering for an environmental aid organization there. She’d have brought something back, a present, something she’d have bought and shoved in her bag then forgotten about until it was time to come home. A t-shirt, most likely. Americans do love t-shirts. So she brought it home, her mother put it on, not even realizing, and three hours later she was dead.”

“Dead?”

“Precisely.”

“From a t-shirt?”

“No,” Sherlock was impatient again, “from the brown recluse spider that had crawled into the fabric in the intervening two weeks. The sample has all the hallmarks of loxoscelic poisoning. If she was sensitive to the venom, it would have killed her before she realized that it wasn’t the flu she was coming down with.”

“That’s… And you put all that together, the daughter, Louisiana, the t-shirt, just from looking at that sample?”

“Of course not. It was all in the police report. I had hoped there was something more sinister to the whole thing, but…” He frowned, obviously disappointed.

“You’re an odd fellow, you know that?”

It was a small smile, but it was genuine nonetheless. “I hear that from time to time.”

“You’re going to help yourself to my lab anytime you like, aren’t you?”

“Most likely.”

“It won’t even stop you if I leave your name and description with the guard, will it?”

“Doubtful.”

“Well, I’m going to. Use the bloody front door so you don’t get the guys canned for a security breach. They’ll recognize you from my description and will let you in.

Sherlock looked startled. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, well, stop scaring my interns and we’ll call it even. You obviously know what you’re doing, so I suppose I can trust you with my equipment.”

“As if it were my own.”

“Thought it already was.”

Sherlock laughed, and Mike couldn’t help joining him. He stuck out his hand. “Mike Stamford. Pleasure to meet you.”

“Mike.” His hand was cool but firm when he took Mike’s. “The pleasure’s mine.”

Little did he know in that moment that in nine months’ time, he’d be helping Sherlock Holmes find a flatmate.


End file.
